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Ex Spy Fingers Russians on Iraqi WMD's

As a former Romanian spy chief who used to take orders from the Soviet KGB, it is perfectly obvious to me that Russia is behind the evanescence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. After all, Russia helped Saddam get his hands on them in the first place. The Soviet Union and all its bloc states always had a standard operating procedure for deep sixing weapons of mass destruction — in Romanian it was codenamed "Sarindar, meaning "emergency exit."Implemented it in Libya. It was for ridding Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Western imperialists ever got near them. We wanted to make sure they would never be tracedback to us, and we also wanted to frustrate the West by not giving them anything they could make propaganda with.

As a former Romanian spy chief who used to take orders from the Soviet KGB, it is perfectly obvious to me that Russia is behind the evanescence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. After all, Russia helped Saddam get his hands on them in the first place. The Soviet Union and all its bloc states always had a standard operating procedure for deep sixing weapons of mass destruction — in Romanian it was codenamed "Sarindar, meaning "emergency exit."Implemented it in Libya. It was for ridding Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Western imperialists ever got near them. We wanted to make sure they would never be tracedback to us, and we also wanted to frustrate the West by not giving them anything they could make propaganda with.

By Ion Mihai Pacepa(Via Way Back Machine since the original page has been mysteriously pulled down)http://web.archive.org/web/20050404061710/washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20030820-081256-6822r.htmOn March 20, Russian PresidentVladimir Putin denounced the U.S.-led "aggression"against Iraq as "unwarranted" and "unjustifiable." Three days later, Pravdasaid that ananonymous Russian "military expert" was predicting that the United States wouldfabricate finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Russian Foreign Minister IgorIvanov immediately started plying the idea abroad, and it has taken hold aroundtheworld ever since. As a former Romanian spy chief who used to take orders from the Soviet KGB, it isperfectly obvious to me that Russia is behind the evanescence of Saddam Hussein'sweapons of mass destruction. After all, Russia helped Saddam gethis hands on them inthe first place. The Soviet Union and all its bloc states always had a standard operatingprocedure for deep sixing weapons of mass destruction—in Romanian it wascodenamed "Sarindar, meaning "emergency exit."Implemented it in Libya.It was forridding Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Westernimperialists ever got near them. We wanted to make sure they would never be tracedback to us, and we also wanted to frustrate the West by not giving them anything theycould make propaganda with. All chemical weapons were to be immediately burned or buried deep at sea.Technological documentation, however, would be preserved in microfiche buried inwaterproof containers for future reconstruction. Chemical weapons, especially thoseproduced in Third Worldcountries, which lack sophisticated production facilities, oftendo not retainlethal properties after a few months on the shelf and are routinelydumped anyway. And all chemical weapons plants had a civilian cover making detectiondifficult, regardless of the circumstances.The plan included an elaborate propaganda routine. Anyone accusing MoammarGadhafi of possessing chemical weapons would be ridiculed. Lies, all lies! Come to Libyaand see! Our Westernleft-wing organizations, like the World Peace Council, existed forsole purpose of spreading the propaganda we gave them. These very same groups braythe exact same themes to this day. We always relied on their expertise at organizinglarge street demonstrations in Western Europe over America'swar-mongering wheneverwe wanted to distract world attention from the crimes of the vicious regimes wesponsored.

Iraq, in my view, had its own "Sarindar" plan in effect direct from Moscow. Itcertainly had onein the past. Nicolae Ceausescu told me so, and he heard it fromLeonid Brezhnev. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, and later, Gen. Yevgeny Primakov, toldme so too. In the late 1970s, Gen. Primakov ran Saddam's weapons programs. Afterthat, as you may recall, hewas promoted to head of the Soviet foreign intelligenceservice in 1990, to Russia's minister of foreign affairs in 1996, and in 1998, to primeminister. What you may not know is that Primakov hates Israel and has alwayschampioned Arab radicalism. He wasa personal friend of Saddam's and has repeatedlyvisited Baghdad after 1991, quietly helping Saddam play his game of hide-and-seek.The Soviet bloc not only sold Saddam its WMDs, but it showed them how to make them"disappear." Russia is still at it. Primakov was in Baghdad from December until a coupleof days before the war, along with a team of Russian military experts led by two of Russia's topnotch "retired"generals,Vladislav Achalov, a former deputy defenseminister, and Igor Maltsev, a formerair defense chief of staff. They were all therereceiving honorary medals from the Iraqi defense minister. They clearly were not thereto give Saddam military advice for the upcomingwar—Saddam'sKatyusha launcherswere of World War II vintage, and his T-72 tanks, BMP-1 fighting vehicles and MiGfighter planes were all obviously useless against America. "I did not fly to Baghdad todrink coffee," was what Gen. Achalov told the media afterward. They were thereorchestrating Iraq's "Sarindar" plan.TheU.S. military in fact, has already found the only thing that would have beenallowed to survive under the classic Soviet "Sarindar" plan to liquidate weapons arsenalsin the event of defeat in war—the technological documents showing how to reproduceweapons stocks in just a few weeks.Such a plan has undoubtedly been in place since August 1995—when Saddam'sson-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, who ran Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biologicalprograms for 10 years, defected to Jordan. That August, UNSCOM and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors searched a chicken farm owned by Kamel'sfamily and found more than one hundred metal trunks and boxes containingdocumentation dealing with all categories of weapons, including nuclear. Caught red-handed, Iraq at last admitted to its "extensive biological warfare program, includingweaponization," issued a "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure Report" and turned overdocuments about the nerve agent VX and nuclear weapons.Saddam then lured Gen. Kamel back, pretending to pardon his defection. Three dayslater, Kamel and over 40 relatives, including women and children, were murdered, inwhat the official Iraqi press described as a "spontaneous administration of tribal justice." After sending that message to his cowed, miserable people, Saddam thenmade a show of cooperation with U.N. inspection, since Kamel had just compromised allhis programs anyway. In November 1995, he issued a second "Full, Final and CompleteDisclosure" as to his supposedly non-existent missile programs. That very same month,Jordan intercepted a large shipment of high-grade missile components destined forIraq. UNSCOM soon fished similar missile components out of the Tigris River, againrefuting Saddam's spluttering denials. In June 1996, Saddam slammed the door shut to

UNSCOM's inspection of any "concealment mechanisms." On Aug. 5, 1998, haltedcooperation with UNSCOM and the IAEA completely, and they withdrew on Dec. 16,1998. Saddam had another four years to develop and hide his weapons of massdestruction without any annoying, prying eyes. U.N. Security Council resolutions 1115,(June 21, 1997), 1137 (Nov. 12, 1997), and 1194 (Sept. 9, 1998) were issuedcondemning Iraq—ineffectual words that had no effect. In 2002, under the pressure of a huge U.S. military buildup by a new U.S. administration, Saddam made yet another"Full, Final and Complete Disclosure," which was found to contain "false statements"and to constitute another "material breach" of U.N. and IAEA inspection and of paragraphs eight to 13 of resolution 687 (1991).It was just a few days after this last "Disclosure," after a decade of intervening withthe U.N. and the rest of the world on Iraq's behalf, that Gen. Primakov and his team of military experts landed in Baghdad—even though, with 200,000 U.S. troops at theborder, war was imminent, and Moscow could no longer save Saddam Hussein. Gen.Primakov was undoubtedly cleaning up the loose ends of the "Sarindar" plan andassuring Saddam that Moscow would rebuildhis weapons of mass destruction after thestorm subsided for a good price.Mr. Putin likes to take shots at America and wants to reassert Russia in world affairs.Why would he not take advantage of this opportunity? As minister of foreign affairs andprime minister, Gen. Primakov has authored the "multipolarity" strategy of counterbalancing American leadership by elevating Russia to great-powerstatusinEurasia. Between Feb. 9-12, Mr. Putin visited Germany and France to propose a three-power tacticalalignment against the United States to advocate further inspectionsrather than war. On Feb. 21, the Russian Duma appealed to the German and Frenchparliaments to join them on March 4-7 in Baghdad, for "preventing U.S. militaryaggression against Iraq." Crowds of European leftists, steeped for generations in left-wing propaganda straight out of Moscow, continue to find the line appealing.Mr. Putin's tactics have worked. The United States won a brilliant military victory,demolishing a dictatorship without destroying the country, but it has begun losing thepeace. While American troops unveiled the mass graves of Saddam's victims, anti- American forces in Western Europe and elsewhere, spewed out vitriolic attacks,accusing Washington of greed for oil and not of really caring about weapons of massdestruction, or exaggerating their risks, as if weapons of mass destruction were reallynothing very much to worry about after all.It is worth remembering that Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogenbomb, chose to live in a Soviet gulag instead of continuing to develop the power of death. "I wanted to alert the world," Sakharov explained in 1968, "to the grave perilsthreatening the human race thermonuclear extinction, ecological catastrophe, famine."Even Igor Kurchatov, the KGB academician who headed the Soviet nuclear programfrom 1943 until his death in 1960, expressed deep qualms of conscience about helpingto create weapons of mass destruction. "The rate of growth of atomic explosives issuch," he warned in an article written together with several other Soviet nuclearscientists not long before he died, "that in just a few years the stockpile will be large

Ronpaulians: Ron Paul says that Bush lied about WMD's. Okay, if that's true, which it isn't, then what exactly did Saddam gas the Kurds with? The Iraqi WMD program was run by the Russians. The Russians pulled the WMD's from Iraq prior to the invasion.